So, before I do it on sunday wanted to find out how to do it and what is involved in doing it. I have a new timing chain with timing cam, the old one I beleive may be original like most of the things I replaced this far. the seal behind the cam and on top of the oil pan has been long gone. So on a
1984 Camaro z 28
305 Vin H
4bbl Quadra Jet
how hard should it be, what is envolved, and how long. Do you think that after replacing this it would run better. Thanks
Rich

I strongly suggest you beg, borrow or buy a motor manual for your particular engine and read the timing chain R&R section before you even attempt to tear into it. It isnt hard, but if you have never done it before and are not very familiar with engines then I believe you would be in over your head. Or..get a knowledgeable person to help you, good luck

No real tricks, just read the R&R section, you'll need a harmonic balancer puller, and a gear puller for the crank gear. Make sure the dots on the crank gear and cam gear are at 12:00 o'clock and 6:00 o'clock respecfully by ticking the starter till they line up vertically before you remove the cam gear. You'll also need a harmonic balancer installation tool, DONT beat it on with a hammer.

Make sure to not let any crap fall into the engine. You will have both the front and top open and will have a lot of gasket clean up to do. One work of advise is to just throw away the front an rear intake rubber gaskets and use a nice 1/4" or so bead of RTV black or blue. Clean everything well before re-assebly. Use Quality gaskets, cheapos will end up costing mre in the end. Follow the breakin instructions for the cam to the letter. It is real important to get the engine started with minimal cranking so make sure the distributor is close enough to start right up. It is a big job to change a cam, not hard but a lot of stuff to take apart. You usually will need to pull the radiator and condenser (if equipt)also.

Did you mean timing gears instead of timing cam or did you mean a full camshaft swap?

If in fact you are going for a full-on cam replacement you're in for a lot of work. It's not hard to do but it is somewhat time consuming. Not only do you have to pull the intake, distributor, valve covers, lifters and pushrods you also have to pull the water pump, harmonic balancer, drop the oil pan and pull the timing cover. You may also have to lift the engine out of the engine mounts with a hoist to allow room to drop the oil pan enough to pull the front cover, this is a good time to replace the oil pan gasket. You're probably also going to have to pull the radiator and maybe even the grille to allow enough room to swap out the cam. If you have air conditioning then you're going to have to pull the condenser and probably the compressor as well. If you do have air conditioning then the refrigerant will be R-12 and it is illegal to vent that stuff to the atmosphere which means you're going to have to pay somebody to recover the refrigerant. Plan for two days to do the job, if you get started Sunday then the chances are pretty good that you won't get it done.

A timing chain replacement won't take nearly as long but you should still plan on dropping the entire oil pan in order to replace the oil pan gasket. You're going to go far enough into the engine that it would be a good time to change it out, especially if it's leaking. Give yourself the entire day for this job just in case you run into any unexpected problems.

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